Palm Pre (with Sprint)

Posted on Tue 06/23/09 in Reviews

Although I am a techie, I rarely splurge on the latest and greatest. However, I picked up the Palm Pre one day after its release. I’ve used it for three weeks now, and I can safely say I love it like I’ve never loved a phone before.

I’m not going to review all the features because there are tons of reviews out there. I am going to touch on my raves and complaints from the perspective of an email-receiving, text-messaging former user of the Sprint Mogul who tried his best to convince himself to get an iPhone like everybody else on the planet.

I paid $299 in the store with a 2-year contract renewal and a $100 mail-in-rebate on the way. So, $200 was a great price point. I’ve been happy with Sprint, and I figure that everyone complains about their carrier, so might as well stay. I also decided to stay with Sprint because if I switched to ATT and had an iPhone plan, my bill would go up $50/month. That was the primary deal-breaker for my entertaining getting an iPhone.

CONSIDERATIONS

• The interface and OS

  Smooth and easy to navigate. The buttons are in the right spots and the “flicks” (how you close items) works MUCH better than trying to find a small X in the corner of the screen to close a program. I LOATHE Windows Mobile. Yeah, it sync’d nicely (most of the time) with Outlook, but it regularly crashed and was (without the details) annoying and time-wasting.
  

• Wireless syncing

  This took a while to get used to because you don’t just hook it to your computer. It syncs wirelessly. It can sync easily with exchange or google. I sync my standalone Outlook to gmail and google calendar and, subsequently, to my phone. All changes are sync’d, and it seems to work pretty good. I did have to re-setup my google account once because it stopped syncing changes correctly. I paid $10 for gsyncit, which works great and is very versatile.
  I also have it setup that I can post an event that my wife’s phone syncs to on our shared family google calendar. That RULES!

• The Keyboard

  I wanted a keyboard. I had a large one on the Mogul, so I wasn’t ready to go to an all touch screen keyboard yet. The Pre’s keyboard pulls out easily and is sufficient. It is a little cramped for my large fingers, and I have to use my fingernails for the top row. But, it is hardly irritating.

• Storage

  8GBs of memory is fine for me, but there is no room for additional storage cards. Nope — nada.
  

• Remote erase

  I LOVE that if I lose my phone I can login to my Palm Profile and hit one button to remotely erase my phone and all its info.
  

• GPS, Maps

  The ease, speed and integration of Sprint Navigation and Google Maps is AWESOME! I’ve used it countless times already, and I get gitty every time. Google Maps knows where you are and finds what you are looking for with ease. The GPS is smart and anticipates well what you are looking for while you type.
  

• Battery

  The battery life has been light years better than my Mogul or may Palm devices previous to that. I can go more than a full day without charging, with moderate use (data and bluetooth on). The battery is also replaceable (unlike the iPhone), and I like that a lot. Batteries lose their flare after about a year of use, so it will be nice to replace the battery and not the phone.

• Texting and Emailing

  Works great in all aspects. Emails even default to put that cute little message implying to excuse your curt response, “Sent from my Palm Pre.”
  

• Cosmetics

  The phone looks cool, has a large screen, and is just smaller than the iPhone (when the keyboard is not out). If it were a car, it’d be a Dodge Charger — all black with dark tint. You’ve seen them on the road.
  

• App Support

  Slowly but surely, the apps are appearing. Palm is supposedly more liberal with development assistance for apps than the iPod, but we’ll see how that plays out. Each week, a couple apps appear in the app catalog on the phone. I’m using the linkedin app, infopedia, and a few others. There is a great one for taking payments to an Intuit merchant account (which I do not use). It could be the same as the one you see in the iPhone commercial.
  

• iTunes

  “But it won’t sync with my iTunes!!!!!” Well, this one does. Yes, it actually syncs with iTunes well.
  

• Easy

  I might actually recommend this phone to my dad. Like the old AOL commercials… “It’s so easy, even my dad can do it!”
  

That’s about it – quick review of my recent love affair. You can thank Ben Tobias for inciting me to write this review.